Subscription topics and the preference center

Topics are subscription categories you assign to your campaigns. A customer who no longer wants your weekly digest can leave that one topic and keep everything else, rather than unsubscribing from all your email. The preference center is the page that shows them their topics and lets them choose.

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How topics work

A topic has a name, an optional description that customers see, and a default status. Topics belong to a project.

• Assign a topic to a campaign. Each campaign and each workflow can have one topic, set in the Subscription panel. A campaign inside a workflow uses the workflow’s topic unless the campaign sets its own.
• Vero filters the send. When a campaign has a topic, only customers subscribed to that topic are sent to. Customers who have opted out of the topic are skipped.
• Campaigns without a topic go to everyone. A campaign with No topic is sent to all subscribed customers in the audience, exactly as before. Transactional campaigns, password resets, and receipts are usually left without a topic for this reason.
• The default status decides what happens before a customer chooses. A topic that defaults to subscribed includes everyone who has never expressed a preference. A topic that defaults to unsubscribed reaches nobody until a customer has been explicitly opted in through the API, or has ticked it and saved their preferences.
• Subscriptions can be set programmatically. As well as letting customers choose for themselves, you can subscribe or unsubscribe a customer from any topic when you create or update their profile through the API. This is how you carry existing consent over from another system, or record an opt-in captured on your own signup form.

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Global unsubscribes still win

A customer who is unsubscribed from your project receives nothing, whatever their topic preferences say. Topics narrow who gets a message; they never override a global opt-out. This also shapes what the preference center shows. A globally unsubscribed customer sees no topic list at all, only a Resubscribe button. When they resubscribe, every topic is reset to its default status and the topic list returns.

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What your customers see

Both pages are hosted by Vero and are reached from links you place in your emails.

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The preference center

Reached from {{url.manage_preferences}}. It shows the email address being managed and a checkbox for every topic in your project, with descriptions where you have set them. Topics are listed alphabetically. From here a customer can:

• Tick and untick topics and select Save preferences.
• Select Unsubscribe from all, which opts them out of your project entirely and offers them a way back.
• Select Resubscribe, if they arrived already unsubscribed.

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The topic unsubscribe page

Reached from {{url.unsubscribe_topic}}. It names the one topic the email was sent under, explains that other subscriptions are unaffected, and asks the customer to confirm.

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The mail client Unsubscribe button

Gmail, Apple Mail, and Outlook show their own Unsubscribe button next to your sender name. Once the preference center is enabled and a campaign has a topic, that button unsubscribes the customer from that topic only, not from your project.

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How this differs from Vero 1.0 Preferences

Vero 1.0 has an older feature also called Preferences, found under Settings → Preferences and now marked Deprecated. It works by removing tags from a customer profile through {{url.remove_preferences_links}} links, and it redirects to a page you host. Building a preference center out of tags remains an option, and stays entirely under your control. Subscription topics differ in that Vero enforces them at send time and hosts the pages for you.

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Limitations

• Topics cannot be deleted once created. You can rename a topic or change its description and default status.
• Topics are not created in the Vero interface. See Setting up your preference center.
• Changing a topic’s default status only affects customers who have never made an explicit choice for that topic.
• A customer who is globally unsubscribed cannot subscribe to a single topic. They resubscribe first, then tick the topics they want and save their preferences.
• The custom unsubscribe page under Settings → Unsubscribe is not used by projects on the preference center. See Add a custom unsubscribe page.

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Next steps

• Setting up your preference center
• Sending a campaign to a topic
• Inserting merge tags using Liquid in my emails

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Need Help?

If you have any questions, reach out to us at support@getvero.com.